"Where do you steer for now, and where am I to moor myself? Leastways, not here, if I knows it! for it is rascally cold—we'd best run down after a boosing ken."
"You are for swilling, no doubt, Bill—you drunken old satyr—always up to filling your barrel-shaped body with liquor! but look you, Bill, we haven't come all this way to lush. I must be off to the Towers. Blow this climate, it's always sleeting and raining in this rotten hole! You and I, L'Estrange, will go and meet Archy, he will have the nags ready; and you, old sot, you may go and be d—d, or swig, or what you like, only be here by the time tide is full, and leave Hans (the boy) to watch over the boat. Give him some grog—for it is infernally cold! Come, Ned."
The Captain and L'Estrange walked off and left old Bill to find a pump, whilst the unfortunate foreigner was left to watch in the sleet and wind which blew most chillily over the Links.
"This is a regular wild goose chase," said the Captain, as he and his friend struck out for a small village called Fisherrow, a bleak hamlet between Musselburgh and Portobello, where Archy was to be in waiting with horses; "and I only do it as a last hope—you must make up your mind for a failure—and then remember you are never to speak of the wench again—that was the promise."
"It was—oh! how my heart seems to sink—in a few hours more I shall know my fate!"
"You will—and I am thankful for it. Your whining and teasing after that woman are enough to drive a saint mad! On my soul I wonder at you—I dare swear she has never thought of you once! Then there's her child, whatever are we to do with that, supposing our plan succeeds? To be sure it's easy giving it a heave into the sea! But yet it is an awful risk! Carrying off Ellen Ravensworth was one thing, but carrying off the Countess of Wentworth is another! Never mind—nothing like aiming high, as Lucifer once did."
"And got a grievous fall for his pains too," put in L'Estrange.
"As we perhaps, nay doubtless, shall!" said the Captain.
"Had we not better think again? it is not too late yet," said L'Estrange.
"It is too late; I haven't come all this way, nor been tossed on that rough sea for nothing! I tell you, however, I shall go and see only; if what we heard is true and she is alone, it is but a whistle and you come up, toss her over a nag, brain any flunkeys who interfere, and away over heath and moor to the boatie good! The sea is a road where it is hard to track a cunning fox like Bill."